Harmonix Rhythm Music Shooter ‘A City Sleeps’ Hits Steam

“Rhythm music shooter”, yes, I know that description is about as daunting as a 70 foot grizzly bear with hunger pains but A City Sleeps might actually be rather good. All about its insane difficulty, Harmonix’ new take on an old genre sees gamers try to survive absolute bullet hell. It has an appropriately nightmare-ish story and a female protagonist described as a ‘dream exorcist’ who is the only one who can save her humble city from an all consuming slumber. Sound good? Find out more after the break.

What is A City Sleeps?

Well it’s certainly not anything to do with plastic instruments that’s for sure as Harmonix are looking to do something a little different with the music genre, after being known as the dev team behind the brilliant Rock Band franchise.

Instead, A City Sleeps embraces music in new, more terrifying ways. Enemies fling out bullets to the beat of the music and you’ll have to learn the melody of the track in order to survive, the city of SanLo is depending on you so the story goes.

In addition, the player character Poe will also have to balance idols and spectres as she navigates through the side-scrolling title. Her three ghost familiars can be put into two different idols – a fast one and a slow one – with each giving you different benefits depending on which one you slot them in. You can use two ghosts at a time and their powers range from health buffs (necessary), damage buffs (also, probably a good choice) and another that lets you lay down tripwires (probably as cool as ice, but incredibly tricky to use by the sounds of things).

And, if A City Sleeps isn’t providing you with enough of a challenge, Harmonix are also keen to note that “Reverie, Lucid, Nightmare” are the three difficulty levels on offer. I know which one I’ll be sticking to anyway.